A Storm To Blow It Out
by coldqueen
Summary: She wakes up but can't stop seeing the world through dream-blurred eyes. Implied Alice/Carlos.


**Title:** A Storm To Blow It Out (My Heart Inside Out)

**Genre: **Movie

**Series: **Resident Evil

**Characters: **Alice Abernathy, Carlos Olivera

**Spoilers: **Resident Evil Retribution

**Rating: **T

**Summary: **She wakes up to a different world and can't stop seeing the world through dream-blurred eyes.

**Disclaimer: **Ain't mine.

**Author's Note: **This is inspired by the trailer that came out recently. Some stuff I'd love to see in the new movie.

* * *

He's not her husband, these are not her friends, and the world hasn't ended.

Alice was used to being surprised, it seemed that every time she turned around something was happening that couldn't have been calculated or planned for, but she reacted and she resolved the problems and mourned the losses, and she continued on. She had started running in Raccoon City and she hadn't stopped since. She'd started fighting in Raccoon City and she didn't know how to stop.

She closed her eyes against the too bright light in front of her and behind her eyes she's wearing a red dress, her muscles are twitching from adrenaline, and the taste of blood in her mouth is bitter copper and entirely new.

She opened her eyes to find the the light either dimmed or her pupils adjusted enough that she could see around it. The other occupants of the room stood strategically, one assigned to each door, one assigned to each doctor, but her mind had already established three escape routes, two with major casualties on Umbrella's side, one with minimal casualties but she'd need at least three things for that one. Since that wasn't going to happen anytime soon, Alice turned her attention back to the interrogation that continued despite her lack of response.

"Do you understand what we're telling you, Ms. Prospero?"

The man speaking is Dr. Sam Isaacs, alive and well naturally; Alice decided she'd make sure he stayed dead next time.

"You're saying that I volunteered to be infected with the T-virus in Raccoon City and suffered a coma, which I've been in for five years."

Dr. Isaacs glanced at his two colleagues before smiling genially at her, and Alice imagined briefly breaking his nose and wiping the smug look from his face. "Yes. We used a digital neural interface to monitor the virus and it's affect on you, and provide you with the illusion of stimulus while incapacitated."

She blinked slowly and in her thoughts she's running through a devastated city, her gun holster chafing her bare thigh where her pants have torn and her hands tender from the diamond grips of the guns because she'd never fired a gun so many times in her life as she had in those last five hours. When she next looked at Isaacs her fingers were trembling from the need for a gun, for something to grip other than the cold metal chain of the handcuffs holding her to the chair.

"You manipulated my mind."

"For purely scientific purposes, I assure you. It was their content that lead us to this discussion."

She tilted her head in response, the long sweep of light brown hair sliding across her cheeks and she used the camouflage to study the security lining the room. She recognized them from her 'dreams', knew some of them very well, or thought she had. Alice brought her eyes back to Isaacs and gestured to the shackles. "If I'm a patient and not a prisoner, why am I restrained?"

"Your psychological profile during your insentience indicated a certain...disregard for Umbrella."

"You showed me a world where you were responsible for the deaths of billions of people," she replied drily, marking which of the security shifted at the statement, their eyes hardening with questions that they'd never ask, not if they were good little soldiers. Alice didn't want good little soldiers, she wanted people with flaws and doubts, the better to exploit.

"It was simply one scenario among many," Isaacs returned, fanning a number of manila files across the table. "In this scenario, the infection was contained but you died in Raccoon City."

"And in the next, the infection spread to the rest of the world and you put a microchip in my head that allowed you to control me. You tried to use me to kill my friends."

"Friends that weren't real, Janus."

"They looked and felt pretty real to me, Sam." Her sigh was real, the emotional weight of of her statement not lessening with the action. She could remember the feel of cheap cotton sheets on her back, his weight beside her in the cot, his breath hot where he exhaled against the hollow of her throat. The soft sound of sand shifting with the night wind and brushing against van's walls had kept her awake all night and she'd missed sleeping under the stars but she'd rather be not sleeping beside Carlos than anywhere else getting rest she needed.

Isaacs pulled a manila folder from the others and opened it slowly, pulling photos from the papers and placing them in front of her. "We used the likeness and personality profiles of employees to foster recognition when you woke up. The better to reacclimate you to reality when you woke."

"You were pretty confident that I'd wake up given you were experimenting on me. Do they know how you used them? In these scenarios?"

"They all agreed to the use of their profiles."

"Do they know the specifics?"

"No."

Alice turned her head to gaze at the dark skinned man holding a semi-automatic and looking generally ill at ease in his uniform. "I watched you die and you killed a lot of people before you did it. Do they call you 'LJ' in reality too?" He didn't answer, but she could see his Adam's apple bob as he struggled to swallow in what she surmised was a suddenly very dry throat.

"You've made your point, Ms. Prospero."

"Back to formalities, Isaacs? So soon."

"We would like to reintroduce you to the infrastructure of Umbrella, but if you're going to be difficult perhaps we shall classify Project Alice as a failure. You were an adept security officer before the experiment. Chairman Whesker believes you can be an exceptional one with your knowledge of the different variables we'll now be contending with."

"What different variables are we talking about?" Alice shifted her sight from Isaacs' sneer and allowed herself a snapshot glance at the tall man just behind him. She'd loved him with all the passion of a woman alone in a dead world, he'd been the one, her only one. There had been a time when she'd have burned what was left of humanity to have him alive and at her side again. She remembered him as the soldier, the lover, the husband. They'd lived several lives in each others' orbit and he had no idea how she ached for a simple touch from him, for confirmation that this wasn't another dream. Isaacs had told her that everything she'd experienced were just simulations projected into her comatose mind but after all the shifting paradigms she'd lived through, the fact that there was a world where the grass was green, the water blue, and people still just _living _seemed beyond her capabilities to accept.

"There is an outbreak. We're safe enough inside the walls of the cities, Umbrella has ensured that, but we'd prefer to not lose the rural areas if possible. You've proven yourself skilled at fighting the creatures that are mutating out there. We're offering you a promotion, Head of Security for all of Umbrella, if you prove both trustworthy and that you can contain it," Isaacs explained and Alice honestly couldn't help the laugh that escaped her lips.

"You released the T-virus into the populace? There is no safety from that."

"It's a small infection, less than 2% of the population of the Montana. You're capable of containing it."

"And Umbrella becomes the hero of the situation, the big bad corporation that saves the world from a deadly virus that they will never admit to creating in the first place."

"You don't have to decide right now, Ms. Prospero," Isaacs noted, gesturing to the soldier behind him. "You should rest some more and consider our offer."

Alice watched as Rain released the handcuffs from her wrists but with five M-16 rifles pointed at her she wouldn't dare make an escape attempt. They didn't restrain her for the walk back to her cell and with stiff limbs she stood and allowed them to steer here away from the table. Isaacs could never resist a parting remark, however, and reality was no exception. "You wouldn't want a repeat of Nevada, Janus. You know what we are willing to do when pushed to a hard place."

She didn't look back as she was herded through the halls, but she took minute pleasure in being able to move more freely for the first time since she'd awoken. Her mind was expanding on the possibilities of the situation even as she perfunctorily followed the orders of the military unit guiding her. Isaacs' motivation for allowing his pet project out of the lab wasn't logical and her instincts were screaming that this was a trap of some sort. The fact that he used soldiers that she would recognize from the scenarios he'd run in her unconscious mind was to facilitate trust and open her to emotional manipulation, but he was a fool if he didn't realize that her humanity had been stripped from her years ago.

They arrived at her new home, a cell of fifteen feet by fifteen with the only open wall holding a celazole barrier. It was a hard, clear plastic that had little forgiveness for escape attempts. If she was going to get out it wouldn't be through that. She listened in as Major Cain issued orders, sending Rain and LJ to patrol the corridors, as well as the two other officers, and leaving Carlos to stand sentinel just outside her cell.

That was their first mistake.

"You don't look dangerous," he told her after his superior left the hall, meeting her confrontational gaze immediately.

"Looks are deceiving," she asserted, pressing her hands against the plastic barrier and studying the pattern of drilled holes, large enough only for her finger to pass through.

"The things you did in the virtual scenarios weren't real, how do you even know you're truly capable of it?"

"I was a Marine before I was recruited to Umbrella's security division. If you'd like to test my skills, though, please do." She can't look at him, not in the face; the last scenario they'd run had involved her, him, and a daughter with her curls and his eyes. A daughter who'd died in her arms less than an hour after he'd been killed by the infected. Umbrella believed in planning for worst case scenarios; she'd never lived a life where things ended well. Alice smiled to herself because she wasn't sure if she even believed in happy endings anymore. "What's the date? What year?"

"August 15, 2008."

She rolled that time span around in her head for several minutes, shifting away from the open wall to take a seat against the cold stone opposite. "You've been working here for...seven years?"

"How did you know that?"

Alice smiled and shrugged. "The same way I know that you have a quarter sized piece of shrapnel in your shoulder that aches constantly when it's cold. Your parents died when you were a teenager and despite the offer of a free ride at college, you enlisted. There's a tattoo the lower right of your back that you tell people is Sanskrit for honor but actually says 'bear'. Your mother called you that when you were a child."

"They used my profile," he accepted with a slight tilt of his head, "but I already knew that."

"I loved you. You were my friend and my lover. In my last life, you were my husband. Despite those feelings, you're not him. You'll never be him. I will not hesitate to put you down if you get in my way." She meant every word. "I recognize your faces, but you're not the people I knew. We haven't fought together, haven't fucked, haven't sacrificed for the few good people left on a barren world. You won't understand why I do the things I do or how, and I'm not going to be pushed around by you or Isaacs. Make that clear when you debrief to him how this passive interrogation went. I accept his offer, I'll contain the infection in Montana. But I'm watching all of you and he knows better than anyone just what I can and will do."

"We look forward to working with you, Ms. Prospero," Carlos replied, the friendly light in his eyes fading to detached observance. Alice knew that would be their second mistake, working with her at all.

"Call me Alice."

"Alice."

"Tell Isaacs I want a team of my own choosing. He knows who'll I want. They all work for Umbrella, right? Might as well kill the infected with familiar faces."

"I think that can be arranged," Carlos supposed, reaching up to toggle the communicator in his ear.

If Isaacs agreed, and he would just because he did so love a real time test of her abilities, that would be mistake number three.

All Alice needed was three.

* * *

Review, please.


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